


Retrograde

by stilinstuck (superagentwolf)



Series: Shades of Grey [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, BAMF Stiles, Boss Derek Hale, Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 11:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9069397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superagentwolf/pseuds/stilinstuck
Summary: Old ghosts from the past return when the team are called to investigate a familiar place. With Stiles coming to grips with a new aspect of his powers, the investigation starts to pull at old bonds and new ones alike.





	1. Pre-Hunt: Interview / Day 1- Setup

**_You can remember. It’s okay._ **

He wakes up screaming, twisting in his narrow bed. His breath comes in thin gasps and his chest heaves, collapsing and expanding unevenly as he tries to stop his heart from racing. He swings his feet out from under twisted covers and walks to the bathroom sink, shaking hands bracing against the edges as he runs the water cold.

There are bruised circles under his eyes. They’ve been hard to cover up. Thanksgiving means family and family means his father. His father is hard to fool.

He’s been doing well, though. For now. He can survive with little to no sleep- it’s not pleasant, but at least he’s functioning.

At least until his body can’t take it anymore.

He hopes, not for the first time, that he can figure out what his nightmares are about before he goes back to work. He knows Derek won’t let him join investigations if he’s losing sleep.

_I just need to remember the dream._

* * *

“We have a call,” Derek says, but he’s reluctant. Stiles can tell.

The team glance at each other, looking around the room as they get up. _The last time he was like this, it was the apartment. The start of these problems._

If they could be called ‘problems’.

The conference room is already set up. As they sit down, though, Stiles notices Malia hanging back.

“What is it?” he asks, pausing at the door, and she inhales as if she’s about to say something but then her expression changes and she tilts her head. _Go_.

When Stiles turns to sit, he notices Derek standing behind him.

“First, an announcement,” Derek starts.

“I’m leaving,” Malia blurts, plainly as usual.

The room immediately bursts into questions and exclamations. Stiles waits.

_Not that I saw this coming- but it makes sense. Somehow._

“Listen,” she starts, trying to explain. “I…wasn’t really planning on staying in one place after graduation. I need to go to school, at least for a little while- I want to _try_. You all know I’m not that great; I need to focus if I’m going to do it.”

“Are you sure?” Kira asks, biting her lip. “I mean…I understand. It just seemed like…maybe you were the best of us, to keep doing this.”

“Maybe,” Malia agrees, “but I won’t know my options if I don’t give myself a chance.”

Scott nods and there are words of murmured support but Stiles can’t help feeling the loss. _Things are changing,_ he thinks, _and I’m not sure why. Or how._

“Good luck,” Lydia says, “and come back. We’ll help you out.”

It takes a moment for them to gather after she leaves.

“…this is important,” Derek starts quietly, but he stops, tapping the file in front of him. “This is optional. I know how difficult this will be.”

Uneasy silence.

And.

Stiles feels something, fuzzy, in the back of his head. _The school,_ it whispers to him. **The school.**

“The school has requested we investigate.”

His ears ring and he almost falls out of his chair. The voice in his head isn’t the same. It’s not what it was before, and he’s startled, a little frightened.

“…what’s been happening?” Isaac asks lowly. He’s pale.

“Students have been getting into accidents,” Derek explains. The remote clicks in his hand and the projector starts up, slide blinking to life. “One in a car accident. Hospitalized.” _Click._ “Another passing by a construction site.” _Click_. “One in a home. A tree fell.”

_One’s an incident, two’s a coincidence, three’s a pattern._

“You think-,” Lydia starts, then stops, looking down at her file. Her eyes are hard and shining.

“You think it’s them,” Isaac says hoarsely.

“I don’t know,” Derek responds immediately, and Stiles hears a note of fear.

_He doesn’t want it to be them. None of us do._

Because what would it be like to exorcise your dead friends?

“You can privately let me know if you’ll join,” Derek says, but his voice is distant to Stiles. “there is no judgment if you don’t. I’ll be leaving tomorrow.” 

* * *

 

Stiles still hasn’t slept.

But he knows what his nightmares are now.

Erica, and Boyd. Allison. 

* * *

“Your name?” Derek asks.

Kira is in the corner, transcribing. Isaac is somewhere loading the cameras with Scott. Lydia is getting the school’s blueprints.

In the end, everyone is going.

“Orwell. Sarah Orwell.”

“What year do you teach? Subject?”

“Twelfth grade AP Government and Economics,” the woman says. “Killing grounds,” she adds, as if it’s a joke, but her smile fades.

Sarah is middle-age, childless, and firm. She strikes Stiles as the kind of woman whose students behave on principle. Not particularly a favorite but not hated.

“Can you describe any experiences you’ve had?”

“It started earlier in the fall. At first it was small things. Misplaced books and such. It got worse, though. A month in, students would get sick. They’d be in class and then it was like they were…drained. They’d be pale, have no energy, and we’d take them to the nurse. They’d get better when they were away, but sometimes someone would fall asleep in class and wake up scared. They never told me what it was they dreamed. Nightmares, more like.”

_Nightmares,_ Stiles thinks. _Sleeping in class._

His ears are ringing and he winces, pushing a knuckle into one. _What’s wrong with me?_

“Anything else?” he hears Derek asks, voice floating as if in water.

“No…no. The accidents started in October. A student every two or three weeks. The kids are scared.”

“We know,” Derek says quietly. “and we’re going to try to help.”

* * *

“Hel _lo_ , darlings,” Peter grins, and the team laugh.

“Peter,” Stiles breathes, and Peter smiles, pulling him in. “I missed you the most, Tin Man.”

“Little Red,” the man smiles, but he leans in so only Stiles can hear. “You haven’t been sleeping.”

Peter is different. He’d been the first to find Stiles. He had waited, held him, listened to the incoherent babbling of a broken boy, until the police had come. They had always been a little similar, Stiles thinks. He’d always been glad Peter had been the first to find him. He’s not sure anyone else could have seen him the same way after that, bloody and shaking.

“Watching too much YouTube,” Stiles says mildly.

It’s not believable but Peter leaves it alone, watching. That’s the nice thing about Peter.

“What are you doing here?” Lydia asks, still a little protective of Stiles.

She isn’t a big fan of Peter. _He’s creepy,_ she’d told Stiles once. _And manipulative. I don’t care if you say he won’t hurt you. I’m still keeping an eye on him._

“My dear dumb nephew called me,” Peter says, placating, hands spread.

Lydia’s glare pierces Derek. Stiles has to stifle a snort.

“What do we need him for?”

“We’re working with school administration. Naturally, they want someone… _experienced_ involved.”

“You’re experienced,” Kira says, puzzled, hauling a laptop bag out of the van.

“Sweetheart,” Peter laughs delightedly. “bureaucracy is a fickle thing.”

“All right,” Derek interrupts sharply. “Let’s get set up.”

* * *

When they enter the empty classroom, someone is waiting for them.

Her hair is dark brown and wavy, pulled into a ponytail. Stiles can see the sides are shaved just around her ears. _Interesting._ She turns as they enter, eyes sparking with realization.

“Good. You’re here,” she sighs, extending a hand in their general direction. “Welcome. This is your Base.”

“…you are…?” Derek starts, wary.

_What, this isn’t one of the people he talked to?_

“Ari,” Peter says, sounding surprised, and he steps into the room from the hallway. “I thought I heard your dulcet tones.”

“…you can set up in here,” Ari says, a little thrown, and Stiles doesn’t miss the way her eyes linger on Peter. “Let me know if you need assistance.”

The team shuffle in and Peter moves towards Ari, deliberate. Stiles notices her hands stowed in what looks like a wool coat, long and straight. She seems to avoid meeting Peter’s eyes.

“So. What are you doing here, puppy?”

In the corner of the room, Isaac almost spits out the water he’s just taken a sip of. Ari stares at him over Peter’s shoulder.

_Well. That’s new._

“I’m a TA. Specifically, for the three teachers you’ve talked to,” Ari explains, but Stiles can tell she’s talking directly to Derek. “I’ve been directed to assist you in any way possible. That’s my number,” she explains, pointing to a paper on the desk, “so you can reach me if you need to.”

“Why weren’t you included in our interviews?” Peter asks.

_That’s the question we want to know the answer to,_ Stiles thinks. Every witness is valuable.

“Because I believe,” she says simply.

“You believe?” Derek asks quietly. His tone is a little dangerous.

“I believe what’s been happening isn’t coincidence,” she says calmly.

“Why?” Peter asks.

The team has stopped moving. Ari looks around the room, noticing the attention, and she steps back a pace, turning a little.

“It doesn’t matter why. I’ll let you set up- I should go check in with the teachers.”

And then she leaves.

“Okay, who the _hell_ -,” Lydia starts, and Stiles can see Derek comically signaling for her to stop before Peter turns around and he stops.

“She was someone’s friend or sister in high school,” the man explains, amused. “She would follow him like a puppy. I made fun of her for it.”

“Sweet,” Isaac says sarcastically.

“Yes,” Peter agrees, sighing wistfully. “She’s grown up well.”

“You’re disgusting,” Lydia says shortly, passing the man to connect a camera.

_I don’t know why we try,_ Stiles thinks, amused. _We’re as professional as the kids in this school._

* * *

When the setup is complete, Stiles notices Ari step into the doorway and pause.

“Yes?”

“If you’d like, I can start sending students in,” she offers, smiling a little.

_She’s pretty when she smiles,_ he thinks.

“Sure. That would be great.”

The students filter in, one at a time, and by the end Stiles is feeling worse about the investigation.

“This is…,”

“Horrifying,” Lydia finishes, blinking at the paper in her hand. “The nightmares? Thinking they’re awake when they’re asleep? The things they see?”

“It could be mass hysteria,” Kira contributes, but she’s biting her nail.

“Could be,” Derek agrees, “but we can’t prove that. All we can do is disprove everything else.”

“They went away for Thanksgiving,” Stiles reminds them. “if it were mass hysteria, I’d expect it to break with the distance and emotional support of the holidays.”

“Maybe, but they’re teenagers,” Isaac reminds him. “It’s hard enough.”

“All we can do is check the building. Make sure nothing is out of order- no gas leaks, no environmental differences. If it’s not the area, it’s either the students or something…different,” Derek finishes.

“I’ll see how the requests for medical records went,” Lydia supplies. “From there we can review the floor plans and the blueprints.”

Stiles is about to speak but he tilts his head, eyes narrowed. _What is that?_

**_Listen._ **

He shudders, body reacting to the voice. Erica.

Footsteps echo in the hallway and suddenly Ari is skidding to a stop in the doorway, hair out of place, long sweater hanging off one shoulder.

“Come,” she says, breathless, and there is nothing more to say.

* * *

Stiles can see it before they even reach the classroom.

A coyote, he thinks, but something is wrong with it. It’s dark- almost black, _too_ dark. Something is wrong with it.

It’s in the classroom and the students have already run out, are backing into the hallway, but it’s snarling and advancing.

“Move back,” Derek says lowly, and the students escape to the sides of the doorway. “keep against the wall.”

They’re away from the door when it lunges, snarling, and Stiles reels back a little, thinking _oh, no_ , when its teeth snap at him.

But Ari reaches out, flinging her arm wide, and he sees something shimmer just before the animal is pulled back sharply by the neck.

_BANG_.

There’s a whimper and a snarl and the animal hits the floor, darkness inching away from it. Derek moves quickly, salt in hand, and he tosses it towards the animal. There’s a low hiss and whatever it is sinks into the floor, disappearing.

“Stiles. Son, what the _hell_ is going on?”


	2. Day 1: Canvas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles gets direction in an unusual manner.

“It’s a bad idea for you all to be here,” John says tersely.

“Well, I mean, it’s not like coyotes are going to be running around the hallways,” Stiles laughs, but it’s devoid of humor and he feels a little nauseous.

“We’re taking precautions,” Derek tries to reassure the man.

“Right,” John sighs, looking out into the hallway where animal control is taking the coyote’s body away. “Well, promise me you’ll leave if it gets dangerous.”

Derek glances at Stiles.

_You didn’t tell him,_ the look seems to say and Stiles raises his eyebrows, staring hard.

_Of course fucking not,_ he tries to convey, desperate, and for a moment he thinks Derek will tell.

“We’ll be careful,” Derek says instead.

It’s not a real answer, which John notices- _he’s a sheriff, of course he does_ \- but he doesn’t comment.

When his father leaves, Stiles thinks he should explain himself to Derek, but he’s too tired to care. Thankfully, Ari interrupts them anyways.

“Hey. I thought you’d have questions.”

“You thought right,” Isaac says, his tone incredulous.

_Understatement of the year._

“What happened?” Derek asks.

“Ms. Orwell was starting class. She was explaining everyone would have to talk to you and then one of the cabinets in the corner of the room started shaking. The students heard growling and then the coyote broke out. People ran to the other side of the room and I came to get you.”

“…so a coyote came from Narnia,” Isaac says drily.

Stiles casts him a look. _Seriously?_

“What?” Isaac stage whispers.

Derek ignores them, crossing the room.

“Show me.”

* * *

“It wasn’t locked,” Stiles says, examining the open door of the cabinet. “and how the hell was this thing even big enough? I mean, it’s tall, but it’s not really wide…”

“Can it open from the inside?” Derek muses.

“We can check,” Ari offers.

Stiles blinks.

“ _I’m_ not getting in the possessed coyote cabinet,” he says, raising his hands.

“I don’t blame you,” Peter grins, shaking the cabinet with one hand.

Derek is quiet.

“Oh, for the love of- _move_ ,” Ari says, pushing past Peter.

In less than five seconds, she’s shut inside the cabinet. _Huh,_ Stiles thinks. _Interesting girl_.

Peter raises his eyebrows, smirking at Derek.

The cabinet moves a little, shaking, and Stiles can barely hear Ari muttering from inside. She bangs on it suddenly with one fist, and he jumps despite himself.

“I don’t think she can get out,” Derek murmurs, looking up and down the length of the cabinet.

Peter opens the door without warning and Ari stumbles out, a little shocked. Stiles notices Peter catch her expectantly.

_Huh._

“There’s no way,” Ari says, giving Peter a reproachful look as she moves out of his arms. “It would have fallen, if anything.”

“So. The questions are- _how_ did it get in, _when_ did it get in _,_ and _how_ did it get out,” Derek lists.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to figure that out anytime soon,” Peter quips cheerfully.

Stiles’ phone buzzes and he frowns, digging it out of his pocket.

“ _Lydia’s back_ ,” Isaac says.

* * *

“It’s not good,” Lydia starts, slamming a stack of papers onto the table.

_Well, she knows how to make an entrance,_ Stiles thinks, amused.

“What did you find?” Derek asks, pulling up a chair.

“Some of what we know. It’s an old building. What we _didn’t_ know, though- it used to be part of Eichen.”

“Eichen?” Stiles manages, and his voice sounds far away to his ears.

_A dark basement. Wet floor. A man with a needle, laughing, and Lydia pulling against her restraints._

“It was a supplementary ward. They would bring patients here once they were…treated,” she explains, sounding a little disgusted.

_Considering their methods, I’m not surprised._

“What else?” Derek asks, because of course there’s something else.

“They stopped using it after an accident. Somehow, the gates were opened and most of the patients got out. The problem is, most of them were almost catatonic before. It’s unclear what happened; all we know is they got out, and most of them ended up dead, either by exposure or accidents on the nearby road.”

“Cheery,” Isaac mutters, still staring at his camera feeds.

“So this place is already prone to negative energy,” Scott sighs, glancing at Kira. “We’ll have to cleanse it.”

“It _has_ been cleansed,” Lydia says, biting her lip. “It worked.”

“…it worked,” Stiles echoes, confused. “So then- it was too strong. Whatever it was _knew_ , and it hid.”

He can see a hint of fear in her eyes. Determination. Worry.

“Yes. I think so.”

“Do we think it’s a previously human entity, or a poltergeist? Or…,” Scott starts, but he can’t quite finish.

_Demon._

“We won’t know anything until we try,” Derek says suddenly, standing. “Scott, Kira, you’re on blueprint duty. Focus on this wing of the school; it’s where the activity has been. Isaac, keep an eye on the feed. Stiles, take temp readings and the extra cameras. We’ll want them set up in any other rooms that show anomalies. I’ll do interviews.”

_And so it begins,_ Stiles thinks. _I really hope no one gets hurt this time._

* * *

Stiles almost has a heart attack when he looks up and sees Ari standing in the doorway, long sweater still a little out of place.

“ _Je_ sus,” he manages, exhaling, hands on his knees.

“No. But thanks,” she replies, smiling a little. “Sorry. I was just passing. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Yeah. It’s okay,” Stiles sighs. “People think we’re supposed to have nerves of steel. Silly. Seeing shit doesn’t make you more comfortable with it. If anything, it makes you jumpier.”

“I can see how that would make sense,” Ari submits, ducking inside the room.

It looks like an old chemistry room. It’s dusty and there are boxes everywhere- broken beakers, ancient textbooks with half-ripped covers, disassembled pencil sharpeners.

“I’m just taking temperature readings,” Stiles explains, watching the thermometer in his hand.

“Mmn,” Ari hums, nodding at the glass tube in his hand. “Can’t be electronic. EMF.”

_Huh._

“…right,” Stiles says, trying to search her face.

_How does she know?_

“I was homeschooled for a long time,” Ari starts, and he almost doesn’t catch the transition. “I would practically live at the library. One week I read the entire section on paranormal research. I’d take ten books into a corner and read them, cover to cover.”

“That’s…a _lot_ of reading,” Stiles manages, surprised. _She probably knows almost as much as I do about procedure,_ he thinks.

“Not really,” she smiles. “The section isn’t that big.”

“Well, if you ever need a job,” Stiles jokes, waving the thermometer as he writes down the temperature.

Her expression falters for a moment and he finds himself wondering. _Why does she believe?_ There was something in the way she’d said it before. Something that made him think she’d seen something. Now, or before.

“Let me know if you need help,” she says instead, backing out of the room, and he watches her go.

_Strange._

* * *

“I’m getting lunch. Don’t fall asleep,” Isaac warns.

“Whatever, dude. Alarm’s on,” Stiles snorts, rubbing his eyes.

He _is_ tired. Sleeplessness has been self-enforced lately. _The nightmares._ He blinks a little, trying to focus, and sighs. _This sucks._ He closes his eyes for a moment and then opens them, slapping his cheeks. _God. I have to stay awake. I need coffee…_

**“He’ll bring you coffee,”** Boyd says.

Stiles looks over at him. He’s standing by the desk, hands in his pockets. Perfectly normal and whole. Stiles smiles a little, fond.

“You think so?”

**“…be careful, Stiles,”** Boyd says, sitting on the desk.

“You be careful. You’ll break the desk,” Stiles chuckles.

It’s cold in the room. He frowns, rubbing his arms. _I should bring my red hoodie to school next time,_ he thinks, but when he looks down at his hands they’re blurry. Strange.

**“You need to talk to Ari. Find out what she knows about the students. Something happened here, before the school year started.”**

Boyd seems to shake a little, odd, and Stiles blinks. Something grows in the pit of his stomach. It is uneasy and acid and he moves away from the desk, wanting to stand but somehow not quite able to. As he watches he sees Boyd stand up, stepping closer.

_Wait,_ he thinks, suddenly panicking, not sure why, and then something invisible draws an angry, deep red line across Boyd’s neck. The blood flows slowly, pulsing in a waterfall, and Stiles wants to scream but as he opens his mouth the only thing that comes out is air.

**“Asssssk heeeer,”** Boyd says, words garbled, **“Stiiiles.”**

“Stiles!”

His name is what calls him out of the dream, sudden, and his eyes are wide in the sudden brightness of the room. The fluorescent bulbs burn his eyes.

“Stiles?” Isaac repeats, uneasy, the bags in his arms sliding onto a desk.

He gasps, panting, and there’s sweat beading down his back. He thinks he might be shaking. There are footsteps in the hall and Lydia enters with Scott and Kira, laughing about something, and then they see him.

“What was it?” Lydia asks immediately, walking over to him. “Stiles?”

His breath is thin in his chest and he blinks hard, thinking. _It’s fine. You’re fine. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t here,_ he thinks, repeating it like a mantra.

“…he wasn’t here. He wasn’t here,” he hears.

He distantly thinks, _oh, no. Now they’ll ask me what I meant._

“Stiles,” Lydia coaxes. “Breathe. In. Out. Listen to me. In. Out.”

He follows her lead, blinking, because he knows he’s close to an attack but not quite there yet. Not far enough to be lost. Eventually he’s back under control, somewhat calmer, heart beating normally in his chest.

“What was it?” Scott asks, worried. “What did you see?”

“…I need to talk to Ari,” Stiles manages, wiping the nervous sweat away. “There’s something else going on here.”

* * *

“Did something happen, before the school year? It would have been close, I think.”

She looks confused for a minute but she sits back in her chair, thinking.

“I became a TA. We got a new Chemistry teacher. Some students left, I think, and we had new kids move in. Um…I can get-,” she starts, offering, and then she pauses.

“What? What is it?”

“…a student,” she starts, slowly. “I think- I think he was a graduate. Maybe. He…committed suicide, maybe a week before school started. I’m not sure.”

“We need to know,” Kira says immediately, turning on her heel. “I’ll ask the office for school records.”

“I’ll track down classmates,” Lydia says, reaching for her phone as she leaves.

“Ask your father if he can give us records,” Derek tells Stiles, tapping his foot. “Thank you, Ari. If you can, let us know if your teachers have any connections to him.”

_I hope it’s this easy,_ Stiles thinks. _Because I have a feeling that whatever happened wasn’t good._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go. Things are picking up, and subplots are unfolding. Hopefully you enjoy this ride...I apologize for not being able to update lately! I'll be keeping up weekly from now on. Stay tuned!


	3. Day 1/Night 1: Communication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's been here before.   
> The activity starts to affect the investigators and it brings back memories Stiles would rather not revisit.

“Benjamin Fields,” Lydia announces, tacking a photo to the board.

_The board._ It’s Stiles’. A relic from his high school days- clear, easily written on with marker, bordered in a magnetic strip.

“He was a resident. His parents had relatively good jobs; they weren’t struggling. He was quiet, a good student. He didn’t seem to have many friends, though, if any.”

“Any issues with classmates?” Derek asks, tapping his pen on a legal pad.

_Of course,_ Stiles thinks. _That’s what this is. The only question is how bad it’ll get._

“A few teachers suspected bullying, but there were never outward signs. He never volunteered anything, either, even when he was asked.”

“What did the other students say?” Kira asks.

“Same thing. No one could really pin down any names- it was just conjecture or rumor. They mentioned having ‘heard somewhere’ that he experimented on animals. Or that he ‘hated people’. None of it seemed to be concrete; his parents vehemently denied that he had any psychological issues.”

_Rumors that just pop up,_ he thinks. _No one knows where they came from. They’re harder to trace. Tell someone you heard something and eventually, it gets around- and no one can tell where it came from._

He’d experienced it before. After. Weeks of it, before Scott and the others had put a stop to it. _But he didn’t have anyone to stop it._

“He graduated, and a week before classes started again, he was found on the sidewalk outside his house. It looked like an accident at first, but police determined the force needed to break the balcony from his bedroom would have required him to push against or run at it,” Lydia finishes, waving a paper.

_My turn._

“It was ruled a suicide,” Stiles says, tapping his folder on the desk. “but my dad mentioned the deputies and investigators felt ‘uneasy’ about the investigation. Some of them reported the room being very cold. Now, these were veterans- most of them had seen worse scenes before. Something about it put them off, though. Even after the ruling, some still thought Benjamin had been pushed.”

“Was anyone else in the house at the time?”

“No. His parents were away. They’ve moved since.”

“…what did your father think?” Derek asks.

Stiles swallows a little. He’d thought about the case when he’d seen the report. Asked his father the questions. _You’re right,_ the man had said, tired but proud. _Guess you picked a few things up from me, didn’t you?_

“He said he didn’t believe that it was an accident. The room was in perfect order. The balcony itself was in good condition; it wasn’t structurally weak. And the way he fell- well, it looked like he twisted. Like he was trying to look back.”

“Wouldn’t you look back if you had second thoughts?” Isaac asks, shifting in his seat.

“No,” Stiles says, uneasy. “In most cases, people panic and start moving their arms and legs. Trying to do something to help themselves. In this case, he turned- as if he was trying to see what was on the balcony.”

_As if something was there._

“So he was bullied, and might have been killed, but it was made to look like suicide. We need to know who was bullying him, and if they had any reasons to do this,” Derek starts, pulling the case files towards his desk. “Stiles, take Lydia and talk to Ari about it. Kira, Scott, you’ll interview students once we identify them. Remember, they’re kids- it doesn’t excuse their actions but you need to be careful.”

* * *

“The rumors were never concrete,” Ari says, shuffling a stack of papers. There’s a green pen in her hand. “Believe me, I tried like hell to find out where they started. It’s hard to do when you’re a TA; some kids hate you on principle and the rest try to be your friends or date you.”

“That’s…weird,” Stiles says, shaking his head to rid himself of the mental image. “Do you know who was involved?”

“Everyone, eventually,” she sighs. “At some points, it was honest belief. Other kids, though- well, you know how some are prone to being nasty. It was the typical popular ones in the center- Ali Lawson, Noah Jones, Carver Sands, Becky and Lissie Grand.”

“So the in crowd,” Lydia raises an eyebrow.

“Yes, and no. There was also Jonas Pine and Laura Caine. From what I understand, they ran in the same circles as Ben.”

“So what went wrong? Argument? Popularity, girl?”

“No one really knows. It was between them, and apparently over the summer. All I know is that Jonas and Laura didn’t talk to the popular kids. Whatever this was about, they weren’t looking for popularity over it.”

_So, what? What did they gain that was so important? That wasn’t popularity?_

“Thank you,” Lydia starts, glancing at Stiles, a little worried. “I know how it is. Having this kind of thing pop up out of nowhere.”

“We’ll keep you informed,” Stiles says, ignoring the mounting buzz in his ears.

He’s just hoping he doesn’t hear any more voices from beyond the grave.

* * *

He’s sitting at a desk, reviewing old transcripts from the bullying investigation, when it happens. It’s a sideways slide, like slipping into a pool and adjusting to the water. One moment he’s sitting at his desk and the next he’s standing in front of a door, staring.

He raises a hand to the worn paint, fingers brushing the rough edges lightly. Something about the door nags at the back of his mind, insidious, and he swallows hard.

**“You have to go,”** a voice says from behind him, and he looks back at Erica. She looks sorry.

“I know,” he replies, turning back. “but I’m scared.”

**“I’ll be here the whole time,”** she whispers, and he can feel her presence like static electricity.

He opens the door, fingers grasping cold metal, and then takes his first step into the quiet house. It smells like electricity inside; he’s not sure how he knows, but it’s the taste of something on his tongue, the faint pain, that makes him feel it.

He knows something is wrong when he steps onto the first stair. He isn’t sure how he knows to go upstairs- it’s like a muscle memory, the way his feet take him to the bedroom. He can feel something rising in his throat, fear and panic acid in his mouth.

_Something is behind that door,_ he knows.

**“Stiles.”**

Her voice is at his ear, strangely wet, and he tries not to think too hard about it.

When he opens the door, the air rushes out in a cold wind. It raises tiny bumps on his arms, the feeling driving a nail in his spine, his entire body racked with a shiver.

The room is dark. The evening is deep blue, shadows in the room obscuring figures. His eyes adjust- there’s a desk, papers and boxes overturned, the sheets on the low bed tangled and strewn halfway onto the floor.

And someone standing by the open windows.

“Benjamin,” he says, _knowing_ , “Benjamin Fields?”

He doesn’t turn. Stiles can see his hair, sandy and loose, blowing in some invisible breeze. He is wearing dark jeans and there is a horrifying canvas of bruises and cuts on his back.

“Ben. I’m here to help,” Stiles says, but before he can finish something _wrong_ passes through him.

He groans, shivering as the other person walks through him. It’s a guy he doesn’t recognize, with dark hair and clouded eyes. He seems-

“Possessed,” he gasps, a hand involuntarily reaching, but it’s too late.

He sees the intruder stand, watching, and then something hits Benjamin and he goes flying, the banister of the balcony splintered by the force. He turns, and in that moment Stiles can only see the relief and resignation.

And the intruder turns, and _looks at him_ , and with a sudden icy certainty, Stiles _knows_ the thing _sees_ him.

“ _Stiiiiiles,_ ” it hisses, low and strangely accented and smiling.

In that moment, he sees the shift, like a holographic card with two pictures on it. He sees the boy’s face slide away, and in its place is something twisted and burned and dripping blood.

He screams.

* * *

“Jesus, dude, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard,” Isaac says, perturbed.

Stiles blinks, breathing heavily, and his fingers spread across the surface of the desk as if reassuring himself it’s real.

_Is it real?_

“It’s fine,” he says, and his voice sounds strangely distant and composed.

“Yeah.”

Isaac doesn’t look like he’s buying it, but he moves on anyways. Stiles blinks, wondering what the chances were of Isaac hitting him awake at the same time he was being pulled from his dream.

He can’t really remember it all that well. He remembers seeing Benjamin, and another student, and something terrifying.

That’s the part he isn’t keen to remember.

“How did the interviews go?” Derek is asking, entering the room with Kira and Scott in tow.

“They didn’t want to admit anything. Downplayed their involvement,” Kira says, shaking her head.

“They _did_ mention that whatever it was started with Jonas and Laura. People noticed when the three outsiders became one and two,” Scott says. “I don’t know that it was purposeful on their part. I think it was something that got worse when he was by himself.”

“So at least we know what might be happening,” Derek muses. “We know his class schedule and locker number. We’ll do cleansing tonight- Scott, you’re with Kira. Lydia, with me. Isaac, keep an eye on those feeds and let us know if anything comes up.”

“I already reviewed the old files,” Stiles says, watching the others prepare as Derek moves closer. “I don’t think we’re dealing with a residual haunting, Derek. I mean, I _know_ it seems to fit, but- it just doesn’t seem to follow poltergeist activity.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I-,” he stops, shaking his head, and the ringing in his ears mounts.

_No. Not now,_ he thinks, _stop. Stop. Please._

“Stiles,” Derek starts, leaning closer. “I know- this place. It isn’t the best. Just…please. _Tell_ me if something is happening. If you start to slip- if you start going back, to before, tell me. No one deserves to be pulled back into that.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says faintly, “I will.”

* * *

“Camera four is out,” Isaac announces.

“ _Unexplained? Or just a low battery?_ ”

“It shouldn’t be dead,” Isaac says, “but it wasn’t instantaneous. Could just be the battery going bad.”

“ _Okay. How far is it?_ ”

“Down the hallway,” Isaac supplies. “Opposite direction of the ghost coyote classroom.”

There’s silence over the radio. Stiles closes the file he’s looking at, scrolling through the database absently on his phone.

“I can change it,” he says, glancing towards the door.

“ _No one should walk around alone,_ ” Derek reminds him.

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m here,” Ari announces from the doorway.

Stiles _almost_ has a heart attack.

“ _Je_ sus Christ, Ari, you _have_ to stop.”

“Sorry.”

“ _Stiles?_ ”

“Yeah. I’m here,” he answers, sighing. “Ari’s here. I’ll take her with me.”

There’s another pause. Ari raises her eyebrow, unwinding a scarf. Stiles wonders how cold it is outside. _The nights get chilly,_ he thinks, and for some reason the thought makes him shiver. It’s not cold, though. It’s a warning.

“ _Fine. Make sure you check your exits. And don’t get out of each other’s sight._ ”

“Roger,” Ari half-sings, picking up a battery from the table. “Come on, Red.”

He doesn’t ask why she’s using Peter’s nickname for him. He also doesn’t ask how she knew which battery was the right one.

“God, this hallway is creepy,” Ari says cheerfully as they walk towards the classroom.

“Chemistry,” Stiles says. “Not my favorite. Not my _least_ favorite, but not my favorite.”

“Yeah. Great place for creepy after-school shenanigans. Lots of specimen in jars, rusted sinks…”

“You know, you’re too good at this,” Stiles snorts, examining the camera.

“Mmmn. I’m a writer,” she smiles, passing him the replacement. “It’s my job to know how plot works.”

He’s in the middle of starting the feed again when something clatters in the closet. They turn to stare at it for almost a full minute.

“…well, at least it was one noise. Maybe it’s nothing,” Stiles says.

“Maybe it’s a bad demon. Maybe he’s bad at tiptoeing.”

“…you know, I’m both charmed and disturbed by your lack of worry.”

Ari slips towards the door, cautious.

“I’ll check. No big deal,” she says, sliding the door open.

“Not alone,” Stiles says, stepping forward, and he’s right behind her when the door heavily slides shut.

“What-,”

“Ari?” he knocks on the door, hard. “Ari. Open it.”

“Hold on,” she says, voice slightly muffled. “Old school. Bad building.”

He can see her through the rectangular glass window. The room is dark behind her, shelves lined with jars. _I swear to God,_ he thinks, _if it’s a demon I’m going to be so angry._

“I think it’s stuck,” she says, trying to shake the door.

“I _swear_ I’m going to take an axe to this,” Stiles says, getting nervous, and he reaches for his radio.

“Well, let me see what that noise was, maybe that’s what I’m supposed to find,” she submits.

“No- this isn’t a treasure quest, Ari, this is a _haunting_ , an extremely dangerous and undefined _haunting_.”

“Really, I didn’t know,” she fires back, searching the room.

Stiles mutters something under his breath, bringing the radio up.

“Hey, Isaac.”

“ _What’s wrong?_ ”

“Wrong?”

“ _Stiles, you’re too calm to be calm._ ”

“Fuck, dude- okay, whatever. Listen, Ari got stuck behind a door. I don’t know what the deal is, but we might need help opening it.”

“ _Did anything happen?_ ” Derek pipes in through the channel.

“No, we thought we heard something, so she went to check it out. The door just seemed to shut behind her. It’s pretty heavy- old wood or something on a sliding track.”

“ _The wheels are probably rusted in the track,_ ” Isaac says. “ _It’ll be a pain to get it open, but we can do it without causing too much damage._ ”

“Great. The camera is up and running now, Isaac, so you can reconnect. That way if we die it’s on video.”

It’s a joke but he realizes it’s probably a little too much when the channel is silent for a minute more than usual.

“Hey,” Ari says from the closet, “I think I found it.”

“Great. What is it? Dungeon key? Extra life bar?”

“Close. It’s a key, all right, but not what you’d expect.”

He’s about to tell her to stop being cryptic when there’s a small shake and the sound of glass breaking. He sees the shelves inside the storage room shake, and the jars vibrate with the force. _What the…_

“Ari,” he starts, nervous, and she’s turning towards the door again when the shaking suddenly turns violent. “Ari!”

There isn’t much going through is mind but _get her out_. He pulls at the door, throwing his body into it, arms straining. He can hear her pounding against it from the other side.

“Stiles-,” she coughs, and he looks up at the tiny window for a moment, still pulling. “It’s- I can’t-,”

_Shit,_ he thinks, the panic mounting. _Formalin. Shit._ He already knows what’s going to happen. Problems breathing. Burning pain in the chest. Possible damage to the lungs. He tries hitting the small window, but it’s some kind of ancient glass that’s too thick to crack. _Think. Think._ _There’s a fire extinguisher. Can I break the hinge holding the wheel on the door?_

“Stiles!”

“I’m here,” he shouts, yanking the heavy cylinder from under a sink.

“Your phone,” she says, voice muffled by the door and the scarf pulled over her mouth.

He pulls it out, not knowing what she’s going to ask, and then her hand slams against the window. She’s holding a photograph.

“What-,”

He knows immediately what she wants him to do. He focuses his camera, pausing to take a picture. It’s not the best quality, but at least he has one. _Smart. Just in case it gets damaged,_ he thinks, and then there’s a small noise behind the door.

“Ari? Ari! _Dammit!_ ”

He didn’t hear the footsteps that must have thundered down the hall. The must have, because Peter looks possessed as he pushes Stiles away, a shotgun aimed at something near the top of the door.

The noise rings in Stiles’ ears, echoing as he watches Peter pry the door open, the wrecked hinge and splintered wood raining down in pieces. The smell of formalin is thick in the air and Stiles almost gets nauseous.

Peter pulls Ari out from where she is slumped against the wall, supporting her, and Stiles comes up next to him to help. Derek skids into the room, grim, and Lydia and Kira are on his heels.

“What happened?”

“The door closed behind her and got stuck. The room started filling with formalin- something was shaking the shelves,” Stiles says, leading them back down the hall towards base.

“Water,” Peter says shortly and Kira jogs ahead of them, her voice faint as she enters the room.

“Pic-,” Ari starts, but her voice is raspy and she coughs a little.

Stiles blinks, feeling something warm and wet on his cheek, and he almost cries when she wipes the blood away. _Sorry,_ her eyes seem to say, and he’s glad she didn’t try to speak again.

“Stop, you’re going to make it worse,” Stiles says, shaky. “Derek- she found a photo. We think that’s why there was a noise. Something wanted us to find it.”

“I called Melissa,” Isaac says once they get inside. “She’s on her way.”

Kira passes Ari the water bottle, wincing when she sees the blood.

“Scott, Peter, go meet her at the front,” Derek says, turning on a desk lamp as he puts the photo on a table.

Peter looks mutinous for a second, but he snatches his jacket off a chair and manages to get it over Ari’s shoulders before leaving.

Stiles just hopes nothing else happens.

_But then again, hoping didn’t help earlier._

* * *

“Is it just me, or is that-,”

“Eichen,” Stiles says, finishing Isaac’s thought. “Yeah.”

“We need to know who this is,” Derek says, tapping the photo.

It’s a man, Stiles thinks, handsome and young and in some sort of uniform. _Maybe World War II?_ He wonders if maybe it’s a patient. Or a nurse.

Or something else.

“I’m on it,” Lydia says, positioning her phone directly over the photograph. “I’ll put it up on our page and see if anyone in Beacon Hills recognizes the man. Cas should be able to help out at the library.”

“Good. Kira, Scott, go with Peter and take readings and accounts of the storage room. When you’re done you can do a quick cleanse.”

Stiles is watching Melissa, the perpetually tired woman’s curly hair pulled haphazardly away from her face. She’s shining a light at Ari’s eyes, watching the reactions.

“How’s she doing?” Derek asks, walking closer.

“She’s fine, thanks. She wonders why you’re talking about her as if she’s invisible,” Ari says.

“Oh, thank god. Her sarcasm is intact,” Stiles says.

“No concussion, thankfully,” Melissa says. “I’d like for her to get a chest x-ray, but since she probably won’t, I’ll ask that you refrain from breaking out into song.”

“That’s gonna be hard. We’re all so Disney in here,” Stiles says.

“Right. Listen,” Melissa starts, closing her bag, “I don’t like this. I _know_ it’s your job, and I _know_ you all are the best ones to do it- but this place…it isn’t good. Not for any of you.”

“I understand,” Derek says, soft. “But we need to figure this out. Not just for the students, but for us, too.”

“Doing this isn’t going to give you closure, Derek. There’s never closure. It’s a lie.”

“Maybe. But it’ll give us something to move on from.”

* * *

_“You’re a stupid kid, you know that? The stupidest smart kid I know.”_

_“You don’t know me.”_

_He’s shivering in the corner, body spastically twitching, a little feverish in the night. The man is standing by the door, smiling, leaning on the wall as if they’re having a chat after lunch._

_Lydia is tied to a pillar, strawberry blonde hair falling over her face._

_“Stiles…I know you think you’re special. But you’re not.”_

_Lydia moans a little, head lolling, and Stiles feels his heart beat painfully. He doesn’t want the man to hurt her. His mind races, trying to come up with something to distract him._

_“Oh- oh, there she is,” the man croons, leaning down slowly, and Stiles tries to pull against his bonds. “There we go. Let’s see those pretty eyes. Come on. Open up.”_

_Lydia blinks, confusion passing over her expression before she catches sight of Stiles. He can see the fear and despair there. He wishes things were better. He thinks that maybe she’s disappointed. He is, too._

_“Well. You know, I think she’s not doing well,” the man laughs distractedly, still staring at Lydia. “It’s a good thing no one comes here. She’ll die. Quietly.”_

_“Let her go,” Stiles growls, tugging at his wrists._

_They sting the same way the bruise at the back of his head does._

_“I have enough toys,” the man smiles, picking up a strand of hair and dropping it carelessly. “We’ll just leave her here. The first to go.”_

_He pulls the needle from his pocket and Lydia shakes her head, tries to say something, but even Stiles’ litany of curses and threats and pleading can’t stop it. She falls back against the pillar, unconscious, and the man steps towards Stiles._

_“I think it’s time for you to meet the others,” the man says, smiling, and the needle twirls in his fingers._

_The last thing Stiles remembers is the feel of it, cold, and the way he imagines the drugs burning through his bloodstream._

* * *

“Sorry,” Ari says, sliding down the wall to sit next to Stiles.

“For what?”

“I got stuck. I should have-,”

“What? Waited for me to walk in at the exact same time? I don’t think it works that way.”

She nods, smiling faintly. The others are unrolling sleeping bags, rearranging tables.

“You know…I don’t think this is just a haunting. Or a poltergeist.”

“…no. I don’t think so either.”

“So.”

“So it might not be human,” Stiles sighs, “and if that’s the case we have a problem on our hands.”

Ari watches him, hands clasped over her knees.

“Before. I know…I don’t know what it was like, exactly. But I understand. It’s hard to be back here, isn’t it?”

The ringing in his ears hasn’t stopped since the incident. He thinks that he can see things, out of the corners of his eyes, blonde hair and the swish of a jacket.

_Yes,_ he thinks, _it’s hard_.

* * *

_He had gone to Eichen, not because he had thought he was crazy, but because he wanted answers. And somehow, even then, he had known that Eichen held all of them._

_His father had been set on taking him. He didn’t want to believe it, and Stiles had thought it was the man’s last attempt at trying to convince Stiles he was okay. But he wasn’t, and even though it might have scared him to seem like his mother, he knew he needed to find the truth._

_So he’d skipped out on his father, leaving the house early, and he hadn’t even made it through the front door. Someone had taken him, in the middle of an episode, from his car._

_And he’d ended up at Eichen._

_So there he was, in the back of some maniac’s car, being driven away from Eichen and Lydia in the cold basement._

_“You’re awfully quiet now. Did you wise up?”_

_Laughter. Stiles pulls, tugs his wrists apart, and the plastic ties bite in. He knows what to do- bring them over the head, bring them down hard, break the tie at its weakest point. He knows, but he doesn’t have a chance yet._

_“We’re here,” the man says, smiling, and Stiles can hear the way his nurses’ shoes squeak against the wet pavement._

_So it rained, Stiles thinks, and he hopes the man will lose his footing and fall. Give Stiles time to run away._

_He doesn’t._

_There’s a strong grip, almost bruising, on his arm. He feels himself being forcefully pulled along and he can hear banging, feels a smooth floor beneath his feet. When they go through the doors, he smells the place, and his heart stops for a moment._

**_The school_ ** _, he thinks, incredulous and dizzy and wanting to cry. **The fucking school. He’s hiding us right under their feet.** His wrists are yanked, sudden metal cold against his wrists as he’s handcuffed to something heavy and immovable. He can hear someone- or maybe more than one, he thinks, muffled screaming, and he finds himself dreading the reveal. He doesn’t want to see what the room holds._

_His blindfold is ripped away and he is left blinking, trying not to cry as he sees Erica and Boyd where they’re tied to the ceiling. He lets out an involuntary yell, the sound swallowed by the dirty cloth at his mouth, and his body strains against the iron loop he’s handcuffed to. He watches Erica struggle, fierce, sad eyes fixed on him, and Boyd is glaring at the man._

_“There we go. One big, happy family.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while. Sorry, guys, I'm graduating college this year and things have been rough. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy, and hopefully, I haven't lost everyone to time. Things will be much more regular from here- biweekly at the least. I'd like to be more regular with this fic from now on. Thanks for sticking with me!


	4. Day 2: Resistance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As more memories come flooding back, the team experience an escalation in the disturbances. When one of their own disappears, Stiles and Derek must both consider the next step.

_He loses track of time after three days._

_Erica and Boyd get the brunt of it. They’re his favorites, he says, and that’s why he’s keeping them. That, and Stiles knows the man gets high on pain. Emotional and physical. He’d been lucky to get both Erica and Boyd- they’d been keeping him sated, with their strength and solidarity, and now that he has Stiles he won’t let them go._

_They’re all friends. Family, really. He knows this- and he uses it, their bond, squeezing every last drop of pain and empathy out of them while time moves ever forward._

_At some point, probably because their voices are hoarse or maybe because he’s blocked the stairwell, he leaves their gags off when he tortures them. Stiles thinks he likes to hear their screams. He also thinks the man enjoys the thought that their friends are only a few feet above them, walking around the school, none the wiser._

_It gets worse from there._

* * *

“Where did they go?”

“To cleanse the room,” Derek says quietly.

Stiles nods, staring at his breakfast taco, and he looks at the empty doorway. The morning sun illuminates Isaac’s monitor, the glare bright white. Ari had gone out for breakfast, bringing back an aromatic haul, and Stiles had woken up to see her setting out the food.

“So what’s next? We wait?”

“I don’t think so. I think we need to make sure the entire building is clean,” Derek says.

“Why?”

“We’re assuming the force is tied to the classroom. According to records, though, he didn’t have classes there. It might just be the area of activity because that’s where some of the students involved are.”

“So you think it’s just negative energy, and it’s not following anyone.”

Derek pauses in the middle of drinking his coffee, setting the cup down between them. He looks at Stiles- really _looks-_ and realizes.

“You don’t think it’s just energy.”

He swallows.

“No.”

“Why?”

“It’s not right,” he says, still staring at his food. “Something- something _wanted_ us to find that picture. Do we even know who’s in it? What if we’re wrong?”

“We can’t do nothing,” Derek says.

He’s trying to think of how to explain that something feels wrong when he hears Isaac make a small noise.

“Derek-,” Isaac starts, grabbing his walkie, and Stiles gets to his feet.

“What?”

“Something’s there with them,” Isaac says sharply, turning the radio on. “Scott?”

“ _Yeah?_ ”

“Something is in the room with you. I have visual distortion and the meters are reading a temperature drop.”

“ _I don’t see anything,_ ” Scott says, and Stiles can barely see him turning on the staticky screen.

“Start audio recording,” Derek says, radio in hand. “And keep an eye out.”

**“Stiles.”**

He turns, just a little, to look over his shoulder. He can smell the blood, heavy and metallic.

**“He’s in trouble,”** Boyd says, voice thin and wet. The line on his neck is angry and red.

“Who?”

“Who says it’s a who?” Isaac asks, disgruntled and distant. Stiles doesn’t answer.

**“Help him, Stiles,”** Boyd tries to say, and his voice is burbling, blood bubbling at the wound on his neck.

Stiles shudders and Derek glances at him, pausing and looking back. He’s hesitant for a second and then he looks…scared. Worried.

“Stiles?”

**“There’s not much time,”** Boyd gasps, and then there’s a sick thump and Stiles is pushing his way out of the room, heart pounding in his chest.

He tries not to think too hard about what he heard.

“Stiles!” Derek yells down the hallway.

He follows, footsteps pounding, and Stiles is blocking everything out but the doorway up ahead. _I have to help them,_ he thinks, and then he hears Derek again.

This time, his scream is so guttural and terrified that he turns to look over his shoulder.

There’s a blast of air then, like a concrete wall, and he is pushed to the ground as the windows shatter around him.

* * *

“I’m _fine_ ,” he says for what feels like the hundredth time.

“Head wounds bleed a lot,” Ari sighs, pressing gauze to his forehead. “At least it wasn’t deep.”

They’re gathered in base. Scott, Peter, and Kira had run out when the windows had broken. According to Kira, the cleansing ritual had just been finished.

“What were you trying to do?” Derek demands.

“I told you-,”

“You told me you had a _bad feeling,_ ” Derek says sharply, pacing. “That doesn’t mean shit-,”

“Hey, I thought they were in trouble,” Stiles snaps, aggravated.

“You can’t just run into things,” Derek says.

“As much as I love the dulcet tones of argument,” Ari interrupts drily, “I think Lydia has something to tell us.”

Stiles blinks, looking up, and sure enough, Lydia is leaning against the doorway, grim.

“What?”

“I found out who’s in the picture,” she says, heeled boots clicking on the floor. “Or at least I think I know. Cas told me someone recognized him- he’s a soldier, obviously. World War 2. The man who called said he thought his name was Arthur, although that might not have been his real name- he was apparently underage when he signed.”

“So what does a World War 2 era soldier have to do with Benjamin Fields? Are they related?”

“I don’t think so,” Lydia sighs, “the man told Cas he thought Arthur had died. Whatever happened to him, he never shipped out after they came here. Apparently, they were both stationed here. At Eichen.”

“Eichen,” Stiles echoes, dread pooling in his stomach. “What the hell were they doing guarding an asylum?”

“It was a makeshift internment camp,” Lydia says, setting a folder down on the table.

_Shit._

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Kira says shortly. “You can’t be serious. On top of _everything_ else we know about this place, it was an _internment_ camp?”

“There are no official records of it,” Lydia says, “but there aren’t records for many of the ones that existed. We’d like to forget about them.”

“Right. So, no way to check and see _who_ was stationed _or_ who was detained,” Stiles sighs. “Where do we even start with it, then?”

“We can’t cleanse Eichen,” Scott says, disheartened. “Getting permission would be impossible.”

“Do we even know if we _need_ to cleanse it?” Isaac asks. “I mean, energy like that, it’s probably not going to work anyways. And why would something tied to Eichen be here?”

“Maybe that’s why Benjamin died,” Stiles says, thinking. “I mean- if he was sensitive to this kind of thing, somehow, it would explain his alienation and the rumors. Maybe he was trying to figure this out. Something wanted us to find that picture.”

There’s a moment of silence. He knows they don’t quite believe his theory, but it’s in the open now, and it takes a weight off his shoulders just to say it. _Maybe I’m right, or maybe I’m wrong. Either way, we have to end this. Before more people get hurt._

“Here’s the plan,” Derek says, turning to face the team. “We’ll finish cleansing the school and keep an eye out tonight. _If_ the activity continues, we’ll consider Eichen.”

_I have a feeling it’s going to continue,_ Stiles thinks, _whether we like it or not._

* * *

He’s about to change shifts with Ari. It’s been a long day, and it’s going to be a longer night.

“Need anything?”

“No. Thanks,” she smiles, pulling her hair into a messy ponytail. “Try to get some sleep.”

She’s wearing glasses now. He’d noticed her change into them while the team was setting up for the night. _How adorable,_ Peter had said delightedly. _Look, isn’t she precious?_ Ari had sent him a look that would have burned paper, but Peter had laughed and tugged a strand of her dark hair.

Stiles hopes, once everything is over, he can catch up with Peter. Maybe ask about Ari.

He spends most of his shift making up stories about a teenaged Peter, and the time seems to pass quickly until he wakes Isaac up to trade off.

* * *

_“Oh, no,” he says, blinking, because he’s awake and in a closed space._

_A closet. The closet._

_He’s being dragged out, wrists sore and bleeding, and he already knows what he’s going to see. The body is in the middle of the room, twisted in places, fallen from where it had been suspended. Stiles cries out, trying to tear his eyes away, but one of Boyd’s hands is extended towards the corner of the room where Stiles had been handcuffed. Reaching._

_“No- no-,” he babbles, unable to form a complete thought, and he strains against his bonds even as he’s being pulled up._

_His wrists are raised above his head and he hears the metallic click of the hook. There is someone in the corner of the room, watching from the darkness. He doesn’t think about who it is, only knows with cold certainty that he is about to be killed._

_The man turns to face him, eyes empty and blank, and pulls a knife from his pocket._

_“It won’t last long. But you know that, don’t you?”_

_“NO-,” he tries, heart racing, jerking at his restraints, and then the man walks around him._

_He can’t see him, but he hears him perfectly well when he steps up to his ear._

_“I’d like to feel-,” he starts, but then the knife is at Stiles’ throat and the world is drowned out by panic and pain._

_He screams, terrified, and then the knife slices across his neck._

* * *

He’s screaming, eyes wide and light burning into them, and then he feels someone slap him.

He blinks, the scream dying in his throat, and his cheek stings. He turns to see Isaac staring down at him, and with a choked sob, he grabs the shoulders in front of him and clings more tightly than he’s ever held anyone before.

“Stiles?” Isaac asks, worried, but he pulls him close anyways.

“I- it…,” Stiles starts, trying to get the words out, but he keeps feeling the knife against his neck.

He’s almost scared to talk. He knows it isn’t real, but that doesn’t stop the pain from radiating outwards from his neck.

“It’s okay. Take your time,” Isaac murmurs, quiet.

Stiles feels suddenly, immensely grateful. He slows his breathing, pacing himself, and tries to focus on the warmth of Isaac’s shoulder, where his head is resting. _In, out,_ he thinks, concentrating, ignoring everything else. He can hear a murmur- the others are awake, he thinks, and with sudden dread he knows exactly what’s happening.

“I- felt it,” he says, voice wavering, and his hand carefully moves about his neck, testing.

When he pulls back from Isaac, he sees the consensus is something like shock and horror. _It would be._ _After all, what kind of a gift makes you feel like you’re dying?_

“Start from the beginning,” Derek says, gentle, but Stiles knows there isn’t time.

“Where’s Kira?” he asks, and he didn’t know before he asked but now he does.

“Kira?” Scott calls, suddenly anxious, and Stiles feels terrible. “ _Kira?_ ”

“Peter,” Derek says, the unspoken question echoing. “Lydia, with me.”

They filter out of the room, searching, and even as they move Stiles knows they won’t find anything. Not yet, at least.

_This is my fault,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t know why. _She’s gone. We have to find her._

Isaac stays close, a reassuring warmth by Stiles’ side. They sit and wait. When Derek returns, he shakes his head once.

“Not even the basement?” Isaac asks quietly.

“She’s not here,” Derek says, shaking his head.

_How do I know? How do I know any of this? How am I able to feel what Erica did when she died? Why?_

“Stiles,” Derek says carefully, “Can you find her?”

“He doesn’t have to,” Lydia interrupts, already pulling her jacket on. “She’s at Eichen.”

The realization hits them and Stiles is grateful that someone could say it before him. He didn’t want to say it. Somehow, saying it makes it worse. It makes it true.

“We need a plan,” Derek says shortly, and as he speaks the team is already packing. “Peter, you’ll stay with Isaac. Monitor the school and let us know if anything happens. Keep an eye on Stiles. Lydia, Scott, you’re coming with me. Get Stiles’ father, just in case we need him.”

Stiles breathes in slowly, thinking. _How do I help? How do I use this?_

“Stiles,” Derek says. “We’ll find her.”

He hopes Derek is right.

* * *

The team is split. The others are making their way to Eichen and Stiles sits, staring at the wall.

“I know you want to help,” Ari says quietly, kneeling by him.

“Of course I want to help.”

“You don’t know how.”

It’s not a question.

“And you do?”

Ari pauses, quiet, and looks wary. He wants to ask her _what do you know? What is it you know about me? This?_

“I don’t have practical knowledge. But I know how it works, and I think I can help.”

“Tell me.”

“Close your eyes,” she says, and smiles apologetically when he raises an eyebrow. “Don’t think. Feel. _Feel_ her. Remember what she’s like. What her voice sounds like. How she walks.”

He can imagine her, clear as day, opening the door to the conference room as Derek leans close. Blushing. Laughing.

“Match her. Meet her,” Ari says, but her voice sound further away. “Feel what she’s feeling. Then open your eyes, and see what she sees.”

He breathes, calm, and then his heart picks up by a fraction of a beat. He is standing next to her, he realizes. Kira is standing in a dark room, nervous but determined, and he admires her strength.

“ _I’m here,_ ” he says, and his voice sounds strange to his ears.

“Is this a dream?” Kira asks, wavering.

“ _Where are you?_ ”

“I found myself here…,” she says, in a faraway voice, and then she turns towards a wall.

He sees something scratched onto the wall and something drops into the pit of his stomach. _No._

“ _Kira, be careful,_ ” he says, and he wants to reach out but his hand isn’t there.

He watches Kira turn, a rusted metal pipe in hand, and all he can hear is Scott laughing _you’re like a ninja_ and then she hits the wall with explosive force. Incredibly, impossibly, it works. It works, and then the dust smokes out and the rubble crashes and Stiles can’t breathe.

“Oh my god…,” Kira whispers, horrified, and Stiles agrees.

The body in the wall- now a skeleton, really- is bandaged and burned. And it’s holding a photograph.

“ _Kira,_ ” he starts, and then something in the wall creaks and they both scream at the same time.

He comes back to himself, breathing heavily, and Ari is holding his shoulders, wide-eyed.

“What did you see?”

“She found him,” Stiles gasps, scrambling to his feet. “The soldier. She found him.”

* * *

He has trained himself not to feel the same way during investigations.

He can shut down, turn off his feelings, let things filter through and save the _feeling_ part for later. It makes him stronger, he thinks. Especially after the fire.

Now, he is sorely tested.

He’d felt the edge of panic when Stiles had been affected in their last investigation. He’d felt the familiar shock and worry, known what could have happened, prepared himself the same way he’d always done.

But it was different that time.

It was different because it was Stiles, and he’d been holding on to the moment when they’d almost kissed in the office, the way the morning sun had fallen across Stiles’ cheekbones and illuminated the constellation of moles on his face.

He had thought, in the moment Stiles was being dragged away, about him never returning. He’d thought about losing Stiles. Not having him in the office, or laughing about a bad pun, or bringing in breakfast with a grin. Telling Derek to _go home, sourwolf, it’s one a.m. and you’re not getting anything else done today_.

It had terrified him.

Realizing, after the fact, how important someone is makes him scared. He wonders, now, what point there is in waiting. And as he races to Eichen, intent on finding Kira, he thinks maybe there is no point.

* * *

“What happened?”

Stiles’ father, perpetually tired but focused, climbs out of his car and slams the door shot behind him.

“We don’t know,” Derek says. “I don’t think she was possessed- it might have been sleepwalking, or some other kind of influence. All we know is that she’s here.”

“Great,” the man says, turning to face the iron gate. “It had to be here.”

“ _Here_ is a common theme I’m seeing,” Lydia says, clearly scared but determined.

“Let’s go,” Noah says, sighing as his hand brushes over his sidearm.

They are predictably met at the door by the eerie nurses. They are, Derek thinks, Stiles’ least favorite thing about Eichen. _Aside from the dark and damp,_ he’d said, sarcastic and fierce, _which are also terrible. But the dark and damp don’t stick needles in your arms._

“Can I help you?”

Derek recognizes the nurse, a little. He can remember talking to the man, when they had followed the trail to Lydia. It seems like a lifetime ago.

“We need access to your basement level,” Derek says, short and to the point.

The nurse raises an eyebrow, turning to glance at a passing orderly. The other man smirks. Derek desperately wants to punch them both and push his way past. Instead, he defers to the sheriff.

“Now,” the man says, slow and deliberate.

Derek is starting to see where Stiles’ resolution comes from. In this moment, Noah looks dangerous. His stance seems to say _I only need a reason, so don’t give me one_. He seems far less worried than he had been outside- and Derek thinks maybe that’s a Stilinski trick, this kind of acting that makes them seem as if they can move the world. He also thinks it’s not entirely acting.

“No weapons,” the nurse says, shifting, a little more sharp than amused now.

“Of course not,” Derek says mildly, and he nods at Scott and Lydia.

Noah turns, leaning close.

“I’m staying here. Something happens, you’ll need me to hold people at gunpoint.”

“Hopefully it doesn’t come to that,” Derek says pacifically.

Noah just looks at him- _God, that must be another Stilinski thing_ \- and pointedly turns away, hands clasped loosely before him as he stands ready.

_I guess it’s time to enter the pit,_ Derek thinks, and as soon as his foot crosses the threshold he feels a chill. He really, _really_ hopes that they don’t find anything besides Kira in the basement.

As it turns out, the universe is intent on proving him wrong.

“Kira,” Scott says, barely controlling the fear in his voice, and he sprints across half the room.

She is lying on a dirty couch, dark hair fanned across a pillow.

“Is she conscious?”

“Sleeping,” Scott sighs, relief palpable in his voice. “Kira, wake up.”

Derek is almost too busy to notice Lydia’s strangled noise. He does, though, and then he turns.

“What-,”

His voice dies in his throat when he sees _what_.

It’s a body, in badly deteriorated clothes, wrapped in bandages. He can see the jacket- leather, he thinks- and a patch on it immediately tells him what he already suspected.

“That’s the soldier,” he says, stepping closer.

Lydia, despite the way her fists are clenched, reaches to pluck something out of the body’s hand. She holds it on the corner, looking closely, and holds it out to Derek.

“It’s him- and a woman. Derek- she looks kind of like Kira.”

Derek has the sudden, sick feeling that they’re in the wrong place.

* * *

_“Where is he?”_

_“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down,” the orderly says, cold._

_Derek ignores the man, pushing past him. Jackson follows close behind, Kira at his elbow._

_“Sir-,”_

_“We have a missing student. Move out of the way, or the deputy outside will remove you.”_

_It’s a lie. There is no deputy, because Derek had called Noah and gone in without waiting. He’d been at his apartment when Kira had called, breathless, explaining that they’d figured it out. The trail Stiles had left for them. She’d told him Scott would go with Peter to the school, and they needed Derek to go to Eichen with them._

_Now, the orderly is looking at him warily, fingering a baton._

_“No weapons-,” the man starts, but Derek ignores him and pushes past._

_“Wait,” Jackson says, “we need you here. Just in case.”_

_Derek pauses. He will always, just a little, regret pausing. He regrets the fact that not waiting had meant Jackson and Kira saw the basement, and the horror inside._

_They’d come up in barely five minutes, white and full of anger, and Kira had looked sick. Jackson had been carrying Lydia, who was falling in and out of consciousness, and Derek hadn’t believed the girl with blood in her hair was the same person he knew._

_The deputy had arrived then, taken one look and lined the nurses up. The ambulance had been quick enough, and while Kira and Jackson were getting in Derek had answered a call from his uncle._

_“It’s bad,” Peter says, and the hollow ring in his voice tells Derek it is more than just bad._

_He sees the school after the fact, speeding to get there, and he wants to vomit just watching the covered stretchers being led out of the doors. He can see the looks on the officers’ faces, the way that even the oldest members look tired beyond their years._

_Scott is there, behind the tape, pale and shaking, and Derek ignores the deputies to slip inside. All he can think of at the moment is his uncle, and how basements aren’t good for Hales._

_It smells like blood and death even before he sets foot in the basement._

_Peter walks up, half-carrying Stiles, and Derek feels the weight of trauma threaten to crush him. There is no light in Stiles’ eyes when he comes out. He isn’t laughing or moving. He isn’t the hyperactive, mouthy kid Derek remembers, spouting facts that sometimes Derek doesn’t remember or know._

_He is different, and it scares Derek. He had wanted to believe it would be fine. It isn’t, though, and when Peter stays at the boy’s side for next month Derek doesn’t say anything. He knows that Peter, better than anyone, understands._

_And when the newspaper prints an article on the man, the killer, Derek stares at it for a full minute without seeing before ripping it to shreds and burning the pieces in the fireplace. Because really, he’d loved all the kids more than he liked to admit, and he hates that this stranger has taken their youth from them this way._

_A month after Stiles is found, he comes back into the office of C-PAC, head held high and a new red hoodie on his back. Derek never questions him._

* * *

Stiles is sitting in a chair, chewing his nail, and Isaac switches the feed on his screen.

“We’re not seeing anything yet. Derek says they found the body. And a picture.”

“Good,” Stiles says, rubbing his face. “That’s good. I’m probably wrong.”

“It would be the first time,” Isaac says drily, anxiously tapping the table.

“Listen, Red,” Peter says, “This thing- whatever it is- started out as a human. But what it can do now, and how it acts- it’s no longer just a haunting.”

“The Amity-,”

“That haunting, whether it was real or not, _could_ have been influenced by something other than human,” Peter retorts easily, “you know that.”

_Sure I do,_ Stiles thinks, _but that doesn’t mean it’s true._ Besides which, he’s reluctant to be right this time. Because if he is, this isn’t over, and Kira might not be the only victim.

His ears are ringing again.

**“Stiles.”**

He breathes deeply, looking over his shoulder, and Boyd is standing in the doorway. He knows, without a doubt, that this is something he can’t avoid. And since he doesn’t know how to control it, the only thing he can do is speak.

“I need you to trust me,” he says, walking towards the door.

“I trust you, Red, but I’m not leaving you alone,” Peter says shortly, moving to follow.

“Peter. Please.”

The room is quiet. Isaac is frozen in place, hands suspended above his keyboard. His headphones are crooked, one side pushed away from his ear so he can listen.

“…fine. But if there’s _anything_ -,”

“You’ll come running after me,” he smiles, tired. “I know.”

He steps into the hallway, closing the door behind him, and finds Erica standing a few feet away.

**“You’ve tried so hard,”** she says, smiling, and she is so painfully sad in that moment he wants to cry.

“We didn’t have enough time,” he says, the words getting choked in his throat. “I’m sorry.”

**“It was no one’s fault.”**

He knows it’s true. He just wishes it wasn’t.

**“We can only keep it away for so long,”** she says, looking to the side, and Boyd is there.

“What do I have to do?”

**“It needs to be tied down. So you can get rid of it.”**

He knows what she’s saying. May have known it all along. But…

“I’m scared.”

**“I know,”** she whispers, the sound almost drowned out by blood.

**“We’ll be with you, to help, the whole time,”** Boyd says.

“Okay. Stay close. Please.”

* * *

Derek gets through the doors of the school, racing, his steps echoing harshly down the hall.

“Where are you going?” Scott cries, but Derek ignores him.

He knows what he’s looking for. Who.

“Stiles!”

He yells, calling out, too worried to stop and talk to Isaac. _If I were going to get myself possessed, where would I go?_ He thinks about the cafeteria. It’s big enough. But it’s not right. The counseling office, maybe.

He stops in front of an old door. The paint is peeling away from the rusted metal underneath. _Of course,_ he thinks, _of course he would go there. It’s held a monster before._ He almost can’t recall descending the stairs, too caught up in worrying about Stiles and what he may have done.

“Stiles.”

He turns, honey-brown eyes sad, and Derek wants to cry.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says, stepping closer.

“We have to tether it,” Stiles says quietly, but he talks as if he knows that Derek knows.

_We knew. We probably thought about it at the same time,_ he thinks. _That this is different. It needs more from us._

“It doesn’t have to be you. It shouldn’t be-,”

“Why?”

“You’re strong, Stiles. You know that. But this thing…it’s looking for power. You can’t give that to it.”

Stiles looks down at the floor. There are stains on it. Old. Derek imagines the janitors, only a few years ago, power washing it. Trying to get the blood out. He wonders how much they succeeded, and if Stiles can tell what’s Erica’s and Boyd’s. He knows the images are burned into Stiles’ brain.

“And if you do it?”

“Then I’ll be safe,” Derek says, moving closer, “because you’ll get it out.”

“You know it can’t be you,” a voice says from the stairs.

_Scott._

He looks determined. Derek thinks, for all his joy, Scott is weathered. He’s been through his own personal hells. Allison’s death. Almost losing Stiles. Scott has been affected, in one way or another, and he is just as valuable to the team as anyone else. _Hell, maybe more. He’s the one that keeps our hearts in the right place._

So he knows, more than anyone else, Scott can convince Stiles.

* * *

Derek leaves, casting Stiles one last significant look, and Scott moves closer.

“Why? You know it would be worse if it were you,” Scott says.

“I know,” Stiles manages, voice hitching, because he can see himself in a dark corner of the basement. “but I’m tired. I’m tired of running.”

“Stiles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you run,” Scott smiles, soft, and it makes Stiles want to cry.

_Like brothers,_ he thinks. Scott pulls him into a hug- he’s always been this way, kind, intimate, willing to touch Stiles. It had saved him, the touch, when his mother had died and his father hadn’t been around. Scott had appeared, to wrestle and hug and nudge, and those touches had connected Stiles to reality. They’d pierced his fog of medication; given him something to look forward to.

So he is grateful for the hug, and it feels like it’s been too long. But he’s also worried.

“…I saw them,” he says, because he won’t lie to Scott.

Arms tighten for a moment.

“Who?”

“Erica. And Boyd,” Stiles manages, and his tears are unwelcome strangers.

_Why? I’m fine. I was fine._

“What do you mean?”

Scott looks worried. _Of course he does. He probably thinks I’m going crazy._

“They’ve been helping. I think they stayed, because they were trying to keep this _thing_ back. They’ve been keeping things safe.”

He can tell Scott is confused- maybe doesn’t quite understand- but he looks serious. Because he _trusts_ Stiles. It’s a little overwhelming, and Stiles isn’t sure he deserves it, but it makes him feel just a little safer.

“Then they can’t leave until we fix this. Come on,” he says, turning to the door, “it’s time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is turning out to be really interesting for me. I'm enjoying it so far. I feel like things have gotten pretty dark and gory, so I'm looking forward to playing up the tension for the rest of the ride.


	5. Night 2/Day 3: Final

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's their final bid against the thing they're fighting. In the end, where does the strength of the pack lie?

“Lydia and Stiles will trap this thing and then, we can exorcise it,” Derek says.

Peter looks ready to bite someone’s head off.

“This is the _worst_ idea I’ve ever heard,” he says, barely keeping the growl from his voice.

Stiles had known it would be a bad idea to tell everyone. Hell, he still doesn’t really agree with Derek’s plan. Logically, though, he knows Derek is right. The thing, whatever it is, can’t possess someone with power. It’s too dangerous.

“It’s not up to you,” Derek says, short.

Ari casts a glance between the two and Stiles wonders who she’s going to back up.

“…listen. If we’re doing this, chances are we’re going to have a fight on our hands,” Stiles says, trying to placate the Hales. “The more prepared we are, the better it will go.”

“How do we prepare?” Kira asks, serious.

“Well, we contain the area. Set up a perimeter around the room we’re using. Make sure that it’s safe. And get restraints- something to keep him held down while we prepare to exorcise it.”

“Let’s get this done,” Derek says. “The sooner this is over, the sooner we can let the students come back.”

* * *

He’s never been afraid to die, doing what he does.

After the fire, things like mortality had become blurred to him. The lines between life and death were always fuzzy as an investigator; they just got fuzzier after fighting a demon. He remembers when he’d thought his family would die. He’d never felt that kind of fear before.

After, though, that fear had been reduced to something else. He appreciated the fact that they were alive, now. He’d also been quick to get them all out of the business.

Not that it had been easy. But he’d done it.

“Hey,” Stiles says, hands in his pockets, and Derek wants to hold him.

So he does. Stiles is warm, and the red hoodie he’s wearing is soft. Derek remembers Peter giving it to Stiles, before he’d come back to work. Stiles had one like it, before he’d gone missing, and he’d loved it. After the abduction, people had been so careful around him, and Derek thinks maybe he resented it a little. Peter, somehow, had understood. And instead of avoiding red- that color of blood, and life, and death- he’d embraced it.

“We’ll be fine,” Derek says, reassuring.

“Can you promise that?”

When Stiles pulls back, he looks worn beyond his years. Derek thinks he sees the same face sometimes, in his mirror, waking up in the morning to a quiet apartment. He misses Cora and Laura’s bickering. The way his parents had made breakfast. They may not be dead, but they’re gone, and sometimes that’s just as painful.

“Listen. I…,”

“I know,” Stiles says, smiling a little, maybe sad.

 _I wish I were better,_ he thinks.

“You deserve better.”

“Better?”

Stiles looks amused. He fiddles with Derek’s hair, picking out some invisible thread. Fond.

“Better-,” Derek starts, trying to explain, and Stiles’ expression turns exasperated.

“Better than this? You know I’m good at it. Or better than you?”

Derek blinks.

“Both.”

“I could do better than you?” Stiles laughs, eyes sparkling, and for a minute it’s like they’re not facing life or death.

Even under fluorescent lights, Derek thinks Stiles looks beautiful. He has been through so much but he is very _alive_. That, he thinks, is what draws him. _Like a moth to a light._ Because in all this death, Stiles is a thing of beauty. Resilience.

“Of course you could,” Derek says, gruff, because he believes it.

“No,” Stiles says, smiling softly. “It’s you. Always has been.”

And that makes his heart hurt, just a little, because he starts to wonder just how long Stiles has known him. Known what to say, and how to act, because Derek has never been kept in check quite the way Stiles does. Stiles knows when to challenge him.

He opens his mouth to say something because he thinks _there won’t be a chance again,_ but then Lydia walks over, tying her red hair up.

“It’s time.”

* * *

Stiles feels the salt slipping from his fingers.

He remembers Deaton showing him how to enclose an area, years ago. _Think. Focus. Don’t looks, Stiles. You want it to be true, and it has to be true, and your eyes can lie to you._

“We’re ready,” Scott says, coming up next to him.

“Okay.”

Derek is there, standing, and Isaac is waiting with plastic zip ties. The others are spread out, waiting, and Lydia is already holding her incense. Stiles breathes in deeply, slowing his heartbeat, and listens to the pounding slow.

 _Time to invite the demon,_ he thinks, and he really wishes they weren’t in the dark classroom. It’s unnerving and ominous and not at all beneficial to his mindset.

Still. Derek is waiting, and he’s counting on Stiles.

So he walks into the circle, looking up at hazel eyes, determined.

“You’ll be safe,” he says. “I’ll watch over you.”

There is a silent thanks in Derek’s eyes and then Stiles reaches a hand out, waiting, and Lydia places a bandage in it. Stiles shivers a little, imagining how it must have felt against the soldier’s skin. _Was he burned? Killed?_ He wonders about it, but doesn’t have time to think further. He holds the cloth, focusing, and feels the pocket knife in his other hand.

When he cuts into his palm, he hears Derek inhale sharply, surprised. He continues, blocking everything out, and murmurs the words he remembers. A twisted tongue, something indecipherable and dangerous. Old.

The windows start to shake.

“It’s coming-,” Isaac starts, and Lydia cuts him off with a waved hand.

 _Quiet,_ Stiles thinks. _We need silence to invite it in. It needs to believe we won’t fight it._

The building starts shaking even more. Stiles spreads his feet a little wider, trying to keep balance as the room sways. He wonders for a brief moment if this is as bad of an idea as he thinks it is.

Something dark and large bursts in, like an explosion of shadow, and Stiles feels is body fly into a wall. He’s coughing then, hearing scattered yells of surprise, and he desperately hopes the circle hasn’t broken.

When the dust settles, he thinks he hears footsteps.

“Sound off!” he coughs, rolling to his feet.

“Here!” Lydia manages, out of breath.

Isaac groans somewhere and Stiles turns, trying to see through the sudden smoke.

“God- I hate my life,” Isaac manages. “Got Ari.”

“Still alive,” Peter growls.

“What happened?” Derek asks, and Stiles feels his heart skip a beat.

_Is it him?_

“Hold on,” Kira says, and then a light shines through the powdery smoke.

“Where’s Scott?” Stiles asks, dread cold in his stomach. “Oh, g- _Scott_!”

They’re all yelling for him, and Stiles is wondering how the hell things went south so quickly, but there’s no time to think. The building is still shaking, and his feet are unsteady on the ground as he runs from the room.

“ _Stiles!_ ” Ari yells. “Wait!”

He hears footsteps behind him, and soon enough, everyone else is following.

“How did this happen?” Derek asks, out of breath. There’s plaster in his hair.

“How does any of this shit happen?” Stiles growls, “Fuck. We need to find him. Before it gets too far.”

“Did you seal the school?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it won’t try. _Je_ sus. We don’t know how strong it is.”

“Should I be calling Deaton?”

Stiles skids around a corner, peering into a classroom, and then he sprints next door to look. His heart is pounding, each second that goes by a tolling bell. He can almost hear the thing laughing at him.

“No. He can’t help us now. We need to find Scott, and exorcise this thing.”

They’re approaching the front of the school and then he hears Kira scream; he curses and sprints forward, just in time to see her skid backwards, away from the door. He’s almost impressed by the way she keeps her footing, sneakers screeching as one hand braces on the floor for support.

_Ninja, indeed._

“Scott!”

He turns the corner and his heart drops.

Scott is there, all right, but it’s not really Scott. There’s something else looking out from the pleasant brown eyes he knows so well. They’re mindless, empty, and frighteningly cold. It makes Stiles shiver, and then he gets angry.

_It’s playing with me. With all of us._

Scott doesn’t speak, and Stiles dimly wonders if he can. If the thing can. He doesn’t really care, though, because he’s not interested in listening. He reaches into his pocket, pulling out his affectionately termed ‘magic bag’, and starts to chant.

He can hear Lydia, eventually, and then Scott starts moving towards him.

Isaac is the one who steps up. Stiles isn’t surprised; Isaac had practically idolized Scott in high school. They’re good friends, and Isaac is strong enough and willing to restrain him. Stiles keeps chanting, hoping against hope, and tries to focus on the spell. _Believe,_ he thinks, but then Scott turns and Derek moves.

He sees it happen slowly. The door to the school opens and Derek goes flying through it, hitting something hard and lying there. Stiles feels it in his chest, a stab like a gasp, and he wants to scream but he can’t.

Scott runs.

Lydia follows, Kira close on her heels with Peter, but Stiles falls next to Derek.

“Derek. Derek, _come on_ ,” he hears someone say, and then he realizes it’s his voice. His broken, worried voice.

“Go. Stiles, _go,_ ” the man says, blinking, and his pupils are disproportionate.

 _He has a concussion,_ Stiles thinks, _he needs help_.

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“He needs you. _Go_.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Isaac racing from the school, yelling something about calling Deaton and Melissa. He knows, logically, there’s nothing he can do. They just have to wait for Melissa to help Derek. Still, even as he backs away, he can’t really turn his back. He watches Derek follow him with his eyes, breathing evenly in an attempt to stay calm.

 _I’m coming back,_ he tells himself firmly, and Derek seems to know.

“Go,” a new voice says, and he realizes Ari is there. “I’ll watch him. _Go_.”

So he turns, shoes screeching against the concrete, and sprints in the direction of Scott and the group. _I want this to end. Now._

* * *

“Scott, come on. You have to control it,” Kira pleads, desperation edging into her voice.

There’s no response. Stiles walks onto the empty lacrosse field, a shiver running up his spine. The lights are on-he’s not sure how- and they illuminate the team, casting strange shadows on the ground.

“Lydia,” he murmurs, pressing a satchel in her hand, and she nods.

 _She’ll draw a circle,_ he thinks, _and I’ll exorcise it._

“Stiles.” A smile, flickering, and something else staring out from Scott’s eyes.

“What do you want?”

“You know. You’ve always known,” the thing laughs once, airy, and tilts its head.

“I don’t know you,” he says, but there’s doubt creeping into the back of his mind. _Do I?_

“We feed on it, Stiles. And you’re so good at keeping it inside…”

“Stiles?” Isaac presses something into his hand. A paper.

_Focus. Remember why you’re here. Don’t listen to it. It’s lying._

“Silly boy. What is a lie but a reminder of the truth?”

Stiles starts speaking, low, and tries to block the thing out.

“This salt will bind and cleanse,” he starts, letting it sift between his fingers.

“Stiles. You can push me out, but I will always come back…”

Laughter. He keeps chanting, trying desperately to control the thing, and then Scott starts to cough. _Please be fine. Please be fine,_ Stiles chants internally as his mouth keeps moving. _I won’t lose him. I won’t._

“You know…what we can do,” the thing laughs between coughs.

“I bind you here, to this earth,” Stiles says, nails scraping the turf, painful until he digs into wet soil.

The earth in his hand is warm. He holds it, chanting, watching.

Scott coughs, a terrible noise, and then his body is wracked with spasm as he starts throwing something up onto the field. Kira makes a distressed noise and Stiles can barely hear Lydia and Isaac giving Scott encouragement- _you’re stronger than it, you can do it, we’re here for you_. Stiles barely registers the bandages unexplainedly pouring from his friend’s mouth.

“Mine is the purpose, mine is the power. Now is the time, now is the hour,” Stiles repeats, loud, letting the words entrance him.

It’s the _amen_ to his prayer. The closing line, the mantra he repeats over and over until the bandages leave Scott, smoke and acid wafting across the field.

“Move back,” he tells Scott sharply, stepping forward.

“-careful,” Lydia says, her voice coming in and out of his mind as he focuses.

The earth in his hand is hot. He kneels on the bandages, digging in his pocket for a lighter, and sets them on fire.

 _I bind you here,_ he thinks, watching the flames. _I bind you to do no harm._

He lets the dirt sift through his fingers, a slight breeze carrying the loose particles, and the fire eats at the cloth on the ground.

“Salt and iron,” he says, almost by instinct because he’s concentrating on the ritual.

Someone pushes the items into his hand- a handful of rocky salt and a short, thin pole with a sharpened end. He stares at the flames as if he can control them simply by glare, dusting the salt over the fire, and when it crackles angrily he hears something.

It’s terrifying. A scream. A noise. He almost loses his momentum, hand faltering with the pole in it.

 **“You can do it,”** Erica says, and he looks up to see her standing with Boyd.

He almost cries.

She is untouched, beautiful and clean, wearing a leather jacket and dress she’d said made her _feel powerful_. Boyd is whole, warm, his jacket as soft as his expression.

 **“We’re here,”** he says.

Erica reaches out and holds Boyd’s hand as they wait, watching.

“IN THEIR NAMES I CONDEMN YOU!” Stiles screams, letting his pain and fury and sorrow envelop him.

And his triumph.

His joy. His love. The memories he has of Erica calling him Batman and Boyd suggesting fixes for the Jeep. The two of them in a misfit group of kids with almost nothing but passion holding them together.

The iron bar passes through the bandages and the shriek mounts into a final, shrill note. It’s like a tsunami, the way a wave of final power rushes out towards him. He is knocked back by it and the others around him cry out, surprised.

He lays on his back for a moment, blinking, and he sees them come to stand over him.

**“You did a good job, Stiles. You’re a great Batman.”**

There are tears in Erica’s eyes. She’s smiling and he tries to pull himself up, already crying.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” he gasps through sobs, terrified.

_I never wanted to lose you. I never wanted this to happen. You didn’t deserve it._

**“We’ll always help you, Stiles,”** Boyd says quietly. **“You know we’ve always been there.”**

He laughs a little, nodding and still crying, watching as they walk away into the lights on the field. It’s sappy and terribly Lifetime-movie-esque but he cries anyways, pouring his heart out through his eyes because it’s been a long week and a longer life.

He never thought he’d see them again. He wishes, more than anything, that they could be there. That he’d get to see them grow up and old and amazing. But he can’t and all he can do is cry while they walk off to wherever it is they’re going, into heaven or maybe King’s Cross station or just nothingness.

Ari pulls him up sometime later, quiet, letting him lean on her. They get to the front of the school where Melissa is loading Derek into her car. Scott and Kira are close, Lydia and Isaac already heading back to base.

“Call me?” he asks Melissa.

She takes in his red eyes, giving him a look that says _you won’t get out of this._

“I will,” she promises, looking back to the school. “Stay safe. All of you.”

 _I wish it were easy,_ he thinks. _But all we can do is our best._

* * *

A day after, there are no new readings. Stiles directs the others to leave a few thermometers and sensors, packing the rest into the van. They head back to the office, tired, while Stiles goes straight to Derek.

“Melissa says it wasn’t that bad,” he starts, watching Derek step away from the apartment door to let him in.

“…no. Slight. They’re being cautious.”

The apartment is cool and quiet. Stiles turns a little, smiling, remembering his last time inside.

“We haven’t had any new readings. For now, it’s quiet.”

“That’s good. The binding?”

“I locked it away,” Stiles says quietly. “Somewhere safe. It won’t get out.”

Derek nods.

“So…Benjamin Fields was a red herring.”

“Not entirely,” Stiles says, moving to the couch. “I think he found something out, or was influenced by it. Whatever was left of him just wanted us to find the truth.”

“…Scott told me you saw Erica and Boyd.”

“…I did. They helped.”

He watches Derek, ready. He knows how bad it sounds. _But they were our friends, and they would have done anything to protect others in life. That didn’t change after death._

“Did they go?”

It’s so quiet, so scared, that Stiles feels his heart break a little. _He loved all of us,_ he thinks. The crazy group of kids Cora hung around. The misfits with hearts of gold. Derek was always like a mentor to Boyd and Erica, despite her roughness, had loved him, too. Their deaths had weighed as heavily on Derek and Cora- hell, even Peter- as they had on the others.

“I don’t think they ever really go,” Stiles manages, smiling.

Derek nods and then Stiles blinks because he’s being hugged, from seemingly nowhere, strong arms pulling him close.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.”

Stiles laughs a little, fighting tears because god damn it he’s tired and emotionally raw.

“Didn’t you hear me? We’re always together. All of us. Everywhere.”

He can feel Derek smile.

“Yeah…you’re right. Always,” Derek murmurs, sighing. “I’ll always be here, Stiles.”

And there’s the thing, the word, the feeling, hanging in the air between them. It’s a word on the tip of the tongue, anticipation, bated breath. Stiles is damn near choking on it.

So he does what he thinks is right because Derek has been open and if this is something he doesn’t want, he’ll say something.

He pulls away, just enough, and then leans in.

“You scared me,” he manages, swallowing. “I thought you’d leave me.”

“Of course not,” Derek says, distracted, looking as if he’s trying to pull the right words from the air. “I won’t leave you.”

“Good,” Stiles says, inching closer, “because I love you.”

He waits for the millisecond of shock, taking the moment to kiss Derek.

It’s slow because he wants to drag this out, the brief connection he feels, and he’s not sure if he’ll get to do it again. He tries to memorize how it feels, Derek’s cheek scratchy with bed-rest-stubble, his mouth warm. He catalogs the way Derek’s skin feels under his hand, the way he doesn’t have to do anything but rest his hand on the man’s neck.

Because, miraculously, Derek is kissing him back.

_Maybe, even if things get difficult, it’ll be fine. Because we have each other. We can try our best and work together, like we’ve always done, and that’s all we ever really needed._

_All I ever need._ _Together._

“I’ll protect you, and you protect me,” Derek sighs when they move apart. “We do this together.”

“Together,” Stiles agrees, smiling, loving the way Derek’s hazel eyes look soft in the evening light.

“…and…I love you,” Derek says, looking scared and sure and triumphant all at once, and Stiles feels both immensely proud and grateful.

_We’ll get through it. We’re together, and we’re stronger that way._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea what happened. I had this chapter written and ready to publish, and I think I meant to do so, but I packed my laptop before graduation thinking I'd posted this and I hadn't. I feel terrible. Well, it's finished now, and hopefully you all enjoyed it at least a little. I know it was fun to write- paranormal AUs are both challenging and exciting to me.


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